


salvation barely out of reach

by ohtempora



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Phone Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-04 19:18:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15847677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohtempora/pseuds/ohtempora
Summary: If Jayson was here, they wouldn't do anything, too careful on the road where anyone could see. But Bryce could go over, let Jayson touch him — a hand around the back of his neck, watching reruns on TV together, a chance to breathe.





	salvation barely out of reach

**Author's Note:**

> tysm to maddy for looking over this <3 title from blink-182 because WHY NOT.

Bryce doesn’t get traded.

The Dodgers claim him on waivers solely to block other teams. The Nationals trade Murphy and Adams and wave the white flag.

Asset management: Bryce gets it. He knows what the front office has to do. They have next year to think about, with him or without him. 

Jayson is home in Virginia, now that he isn't in Tacoma riding the bus with the other hopefuls and has-beens, trying to make it back to the majors on the wrong team. Even with changed circumstances, he always picked up if Bryce called when he was on the bus, though, or spending the night in one of the cheap hotels the minors booked for roadies. He still picks up now.

“Saw you were giving interviews,” Bryce says, after they exchange hellos.

“Me and Dusty.” Jayson’s amusement is palpable. “Suddenly hot commodities.”

“Yeah, well.” Bryce scratches over the stubble on his chin. “Shoulda been different.”

“It is what it is.” A pause. ”You okay? You really calling to talk about me?”

“No.” Bryce pauses too, takes a breath. “They're not going to trade me.”

“I saw that. No LA for you.”

“Nope.”

“Did you want to be traded?”

“I don't know.” Bryce bites his lip hard until it hurts. “I don't know what I want.”

Well, he does, on some level. Not even the big picture things. He wishes this season was more like last year, or last year up until the end. He wishes the clubhouse was less tense. He wishes he'd played better to start the season. All these things and he can only control pieces of them.

"I can't come to New York," Jayson says. "I'm sorry."

If Jayson was here, they wouldn't do anything anyway, too careful on the road where anyone could see. But Bryce could go over, let Jayson touch him — a hand around the back of his neck, watching reruns on TV together, a chance to breathe.

"I know," Bryce says, and doesn't say 'I wish you were here'. He thinks that Jayson knows anyway. Neither of them have ever, particularly, been subtle about each other. There were just easier excuses; always are, when you don't have to tell someone you miss them.

"Hey," Jayson says, voice cutting in. "You alone?"

"Yeah." There was a team dinner earlier. Bryce sat next to Max and felt the tension roll off him in waves. 

"You going anywhere?"

"No."

"I got some time," Jayson says, and Bryce lets the air rush out of him, lets his legs fall apart. He hates the limbo of .500, the uncertainty of the standings, blowout wins and fluke losses. How the baseball season is now nothing more than a slow bleed out.

"You know what to do." A warm directive, and Bryce does, slides his hand low over his belly, hair scratching under his palm. He waits. Back when he was a rookie and Jayson wouldn't touch him  out of some twisted mixture of propriety and concern, it went like this. Except Jayson was across the room watching him, not listening, and Jayson was on the team. 

"Just relax. Lemme talk you through it." The phone must be on speaker, resting on his chest, because Bryce hears rustling, the sound of Jayson ditching his pants. He takes a deep breath, in and out. Once he would have said he didn't need this, more stubborn than he should have been. Now he's glad he can do it at all. 

“I'm relaxed.” He shoves at the waistband over his sweatpants until they're caught around his thighs.

Jayson laughs. “Sure you are. Why don't you touch yourself some? Do it slow.”

Trailing his hand back up, Bryce does; takes care to even out his breath. He keeps his fingertips light, waits another minute before he wraps them around his dick. Sometimes Jayson makes him wait. Did it more when he was a rookie and needed to learn patience. He's gotten a lot better since he was nineteen.

He jerks himself off, sliding his hand up and down, up and down, settling into a rhythm. Pretty sure Jayson is doing the same hundreds of miles away.

“I said slow,” Jayson says—his breath annoyingly even, he's always been good at control when he wanted to be—and Bryce starts, makes a fist with his free hand, nails digging into his palm.

“I am,” he says.”

“Yeah, sure.” Jayson laughs. “Now you are, anyway. That’s okay.”

Bryce makes himself stay slow. His mind is hopping around, half-remembering every other time they’ve done this, listening for when Jayson’s breath will catch. He trails his fingertips over the head of his dick, spreads some of the wetness around. 

“Keep it up. Just like that. Don’t rush yourself.” 

Somehow Jayson always sounds fond, even when he’s telling Bryce what to do. He’s practically conditioned at this point, heat rushing down to pool at the base of his spine. 

Bryce keeps it up, thinks crazily about all the things no one knows. No one knows where he's going to sign next year. No one knows what's wrong with his team. No one knows he's spending the evening jerking off while his old teammate tells him what to do and when to do it, and that as he says Jayson's name into the phone all he can think about is the first time Jayson fucked him, how Jay pressed him into the mattress and collapsed onto his back after and scraped a hickey into the skin at the nape of his neck. His hair didn't hide it and Desi teased him in the next day about the girl he let get at him like that while Jayson looked flushed underneath his studied calm.

“Bryce,” Jayson says. “You with me?”

He's not. “Yeah,” Bryce says. “I'm here.”

“If I was there with you we could fuck,” Jayson says. “Head into the shower, go up against the wall.”

No one knows all the times they've done that too. Bryce likes it so much, Jayson behind him, his chest pressed up against the cold tile wall, eyes closed against the spray of the shower.

“Please,” he says. “Jay.”

“It'll happen again. We'll make it happen.”

That sounds like a promise. He's taking it that way. Bryce lets his hand speed up, the slide slick now with precome. He pauses, raises his hand to his mouth and licks his palm, and when he touches himself again everything is wetter, smoother. He moans, breath hitching, and Jayson makes a soft, pleased noise.

“You wanna draw it out?”

Bryce shakes his head, then remembers Jayson can't see him. “No, not — not now.”

“Another time, okay. Just do what you need.” 

Stupid as it is, that helps, the extra assurance that this won't be it. Bryce listens to Jayson breathe, heavy on the other side of the line as Jay gets himself close, and lets himself make noise when he comes.

It isn't the best orgasm of his life, but he wipes his hand off on his sweats and yawns, jaw cracking, already more tired than before. He listens to Jayson come too, how his stomach still swoops when Jayson groans out his name.

“You should come over once we're back,” Bryce says. “Stay for the weekend, maybe.”

“You've got games to play.”

Not games that matter, which Bryce doesn't want to say out loud, even with his comments about trades the team should have made, the efforts it didn’t take to improve. Saying it out loud makes it real.

“I could get you tickets. A box, or something….”

“You don't need to do that.” Jayson's voice is firm. “I'll figure it out.”

“Alright.” Bryce does want him watching, even if that means he'll hear what's wrong with the team from someone else. “You still have my key?”

“Still got it.”

At a certain point they're going to have to talk about what this is, now that they're not teammates, now that Bryce might leave and Jayson is retired. If he signs in New York, or Philly, or fucking San Francisco, he thinks he'd want Jayson to have a key. 

Jayson isn't his boyfriend, after all — isn't his anything, except someone who knows him too well, someone knows he can count on. Jayson used to be his teammate, and that was enough to cover it. That got them through a whole range of sins. No one questioned how much Bryce needed him, or how easily Jayson folded him in, looking out for him, so generous with his affection and his time. 

Now it’s like Bryce should have outgrown it, months away from free agency, months away from $300 million dollars, Jayson out of the MLB. 

“You should go to bed,” Jayson says, voice making it clear it’s an order, not a request. Bryce could protest, but Jay’s right. He can’t think about today anymore. 

“Night,” he says, and hangs up.

When he wakes up in the morning he wishes he felt better, but at least he slept. The road trip ends on a win, desperately needed after the bizarre hell of playing the Mets, but everything is as uneven as it was at the start. The Nats go home. No consistency at all. Bryce hates it. They've been up and down and up and down all August. They beat the Marlins and then they lose to the Marlins respectably and then they lose to the Marlins by 11 runs. They get shutout three games in a row, follow it up with a win by scoring a record number of runs in the final two innings. He's torn between scoreboard watching, clinging to dwindling percentages, and looking ahead to the winter. 

Jayson comes over with an overnight bag and his glasses perched on the tip of his nose, hair pulled back into a messy bun. Like he said he would. Bryce answers his door and steps into the proffered hug, tucks his face against Jayson’s shoulder and feels better than he has in days. 

“Come on,” Jayson says, once it’s been a minute. “Show me your home run derby trophy.”

He hasn’t outgrown shit. He breathes in Jayson’s cologne for another heartbeat before pulling back. 

“You’ve seen it already,” Bryce protests, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe they'll talk about how Bryce keeps calling him, how Bryce leans so much on him as everything changes.  Maybe they won't. There's time, Jayson is still on his side if not his team, and this is enough for now. He leads Jayson inside. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry to the nationals about their playoffs but i love sad baseball and jayson werth's beard? yeah.


End file.
